Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Game-changersHere is the L.A. Times noting that LA Metro ridership is still falling -- even though billions have been (mis)spent on extra capacity over the last 30+ years. By my count that's the second time this year that the Times has broached this tender topic. As a member in good standing of the LA "good government" (googoo) establishment, the paper had for many years chosen to tip-toe around the bad news.Readers of this blog may know that some of us began flogging the dead horse in the mid-1970s. Go to the attached proceedings and read the contribution by the late UCLA Prof. George Hilton. He was among the first to write sensibly and clearly that LA is not NY -- and trying to make it so would be a phenomenal waste. But even LA Times coverage will be for naught. Billions more will be spent. Pouring good money after bad is what the great and the good in city hall do for a living.We are in the the early years Uber/Lyft and all manner of ICT information sharing. These are the game-changers. For the past two months, my wife and I have graduated from a two-car household to a one-car-plus-Uber-plus-walkable-neighborhood HH. The game-changers are here. Conventional transit was never a game-changer.

Yes, for 50 years we have known that California environmentalists read Doonesbury and kill cute pandas. They do not care, one of them, just the other day, a bonafide greeny stood right by the San Jose Light Rail and talked abut the wonderful and ample CO2 it emits. We are nuts in California, do not do what we do.